Doing an episode like this is a bit of a risk. I feel like a naughty kid throwing a party with my parents out of town for the weekend. I know it’s going to be fun, but it’s also courting disaster.

Smart Drug Smarts’ Internal Betting Pool: 75% of our listeners will realize the episode is a joke. 15% will think we’re serious and unsubscribe forever. 10% will think we’re serious but not take offense, because they’re down with chakras.*

The Perpetrators

Minnie Goode and Dan Mott are a husband-and-wife comedy team and friends of the Smart Drug Smarts family. Their expertise is less neuroscience and more funny-bone science, so doing something like Episode #122 seemed like the only plausible way to kidnap their talents. And we love them for it.

How We Did It

Here’s the cool part: The interview in the episode actually was a real interview. It was a bullshit interview, of course, but it was “real” in that there was no script and Jesse had no idea how Minnie or Dan (in their roles as Dr. Andreet Mankala and Jeff) would be answering the questions.

I (Jesse) spoke with them about a week before we recorded the interviews, telling them “I want to interview a doctor who has invented a new surgery that allows people to donate chakras. Can you look up all the right ‘energy medicine’ terminology so it sounds kind of real?” They took it from there. In a week when I interviewed their characters, I was “meeting” Dr. Mankala and Jeff for the first time.